


Tuco's Friend

by straponselina



Series: Rumors and Hearsay [2]
Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Statutory Rape, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Semi-Public Blow Jobs, featuring: the twins talking! (maybe just so lalo will shut up), intimacy issues, weird co-dependent twin stuff that you can interpret however you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26299525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straponselina/pseuds/straponselina
Summary: Over the span of a decade, Lalo reluctantly accepts Nacho into his life.
Relationships: Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga, Tuco Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga
Series: Rumors and Hearsay [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850434
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	Tuco's Friend

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a standalone-- you do have to read the (much shorter) first part of the series first.
> 
> Usually a lot of the dialogue I write in Lacho fics has a healthy mix of English and Spanish, but since so much of this is set in Mexico, I couldn't just write small, easy-to-figure-out quips. So any conversation that would obviously take place in Spanish, like between Lalo and the twins, does.

There was a problem up north, he learned from his cousins. But then again, when was there not a problem up north?

Marco and Leonel came to his home on a warm Sunday evening in the summer of ‘96. They must have only just arrived, otherwise Lalo was sure he would have seen them at mass that morning. They wore suits made of a reflective material, turning them into two balls of flame in the golden hour sunlight. Lalo beckoned his cousins to the patio where they sat by the lit fire pit, each nursing their own glass of mezcal. 

Marco spoke for the two of them. 

“A mid-level dealer walked in on Tuco giving his friend head at a house party. Tuco shot the dealer in the living room, in front of the rest of the crew. No one knows why it happened, but now they’re all spooked. They all think Tuco’s set for a rampage.”

Lalo hummed. He poked at the fire. “Who’s the friend?”

“Varga. He’s Tuco’s top man.”

Lalo smirked. “I’ll bet. Varga— does he have ties to Albuquerque?”

“He has a father, but that’s it.”

“No girlfriend, and no friends besides other dealers that would sell him down the river in a heartbeat,” Leonel added. 

“Good, cleaner. The two of you will head up there and— ,” Lalo whistled and swung his arms in the air, miming the heaving of an axe. 

Marco's face hardened. “Varga stays. He’s good for Tuco. Things run smoothly when he’s there.”

Slightly annoyed at his cousins’ lack of humor, Lalo huffed. “If you aren’t going to take my advice, what do you want from me?”

“How do we spin this, brother? Do we overhaul his crew, replace them with high-earning street dealers who don’t know anything?”

Lalo cocked an eyebrow, trying to gauge how serious Marco was being. “You’re really suggesting we slaughter an entire crew just to hang onto one lieutenant? Is Varga really worth that?”

Marco turned to Leonel. Leonel nodded at him once, solemnly. Marco turned back to Lalo. 

“He is.”

Lalo raised his hands in defeat. “Fine. Tuco’s friend stays.”

“So what do we do?”

“Nothing. Right now, Tuco’s men are afraid of him, and they don’t know why. Let them be afraid— it keeps them in line. That’s better than them all thinking the Salamanca they answer to is a fag.”

Marco and Leonel blinked at him with twin loaded stares. Their eyes looked dead to most, but Lalo knew his cousins well enough to see the judgement there. They wouldn’t say anything. No matter how blatant Lalo’s hypocrisy, no one ever did. Besides, his cousins crossed lines most men wouldn’t, regularly sharing a single woman’s bed in one night. 

Lalo invited his cousins to stay in his guest rooms, but they departed as quickly as they arrived. These weren’t the days of their childhood when they would play together in the backyard long after dusk. Lalo retired to his library, a cozy room upstairs that faced the east, a quiet place to view the sunrise over the cracked spine of the distant mountains. At night, the room felt smaller than it actually was. The shadows clung to the shelves, which were lined with his father’s old economics textbooks and wild works of literature whose spines read Fuentes, Calvino, García Máquez.

Lalo spent many hours of his sleepless nights here, so in between bookends he had placed photos of his family. He picked one up. The faded, decades-old photograph showed himself with Héctor, Tuco, and the twins. The boys were all in swim trunks, and Marco and Leonel were brandishing twin pool noodles. They were standing at the edge of Don Eladio’s pool, which would have only recently been constructed at the time the photo was taken. Lalo could still remember the day. The bosses and all their families were invited to a celebration of the cartel’s recently booming business. In the photo, Héctor and Lalo were both smiling, Héctor reveling in the glow of good fortune and Lalo reveling in the glow of Héctor. His uncle was pinching his cheek with the same hand that gripped a lit, dwindling cigar. Tuco and the twins were mad-dogging the camera, trying to look tough beyond their years. Lalo squinted closer at Tuco’s sneering face. He really looked ridiculous.

Lalo could feel sympathy for his cousin’s predicament. He had been in a similar one once. When he was 15, he returned home from his school in El Paso for the summer and brought with him a friend. The Salamancas had welcomed Oscar with open arms and heaping plates of food, but maybe they should have established better boundaries. A month into the summer, a ten-year-old Tuco walked into his bedroom unannounced, only to be confronted with a lurid scene of Lalo kneeling between Oscar’s open legs. 

Lalo had marched little Tuco to the hallway and told him that what he saw was normal, and no, Tuco, God didn’t hate him, but it was something that only adults were allowed to talk about, not little assholes like him, so he better keep his mouth shut! Tuco told Héctor, anyways. Lalo cried when Héctor told him they were sending Oscar back to Texas and Héctor slapped him.

“Pay attention, son. Every man has dark and twisted secrets in his heart, but he must keep them secret. Your friend is lucky we’re sending him home.”

After that summer, Lalo grew up. He didn’t see Oscar at school the next fall and he tried his hardest not to wonder about it. He learned the value of discretion, and it benefited him in his work. He learned how to hold his cards close to his chest, and how to always keep people guessing. He never brought men home, keeping his life separate from the sin like they kept cash separate from the product in their trap houses. Save for a dubious rumor here or there, he was unimpeachable. Tuco, on the other hand, never did anything with subtlety. 

Lalo _could_ feel sympathy for his stupid cousin’s predicament, but he didn’t. He prayed Tuco would learn to keep his friend under wraps before it came back to bite them all in the ass.

  
  


* * * * *

  
  


The next time Lalo heard the name “Varga,” he was scraping dried blood off the face of his watch in a dimly lit bar in Juárez. Leonel had just returned with their fourth or maybe fifth round when his cell phone started to ring. He hushed both the twins, even though neither of them said a word. In his budding drunkenness, he held the phone to his ear upside down. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought he caught Leonel smirking at him. 

Lalo listened attentively to his uncle on the other end. There was a biker gang— wholesalers with labs tucked deep in the valleys of southern Colorado. They were riding south, and had reached a town just north of Albuquerque. Héctor wanted Lalo to take care of it. 

“I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

Héctor sighed impatiently. “This isn’t a job for Tuco. He doesn’t know when to stop. We need to cut off the head, but let the body run free.”

“Yeah, I get it. We take out the bosses, then take control of the infrastructure they’ve already established. ”

“Exactly. See, would Tuco have understood?” Lalo thought he heard pride in his uncle’s voice, but the warm sensation blossoming in his chest could also be attributed to the last mojito. “But your cousin, he does have a few decent men under him. Bring some with you. I’ll tell Tuco and his men to meet you at his gym at ten AM.”

“Alight. Good night, uncle.”

“Good night, son. Give them hell.”

Lalo hung up the phone. For a split second, he thought he was seeing double, but it was just Marco and Leonel, fixing him with identical stares. 

“He wants me in _Albuquerque_.” He slurred the word a bit and giggled. “A little territory dispute.”

“Should we come?” Marco questioned over the lip of his drink. 

“Nah. It’s not going to be like tonight.”

Lalo glanced at his watch. A cakey, deep red residue obscured the numbers. He used his blunt fingernail to scratch it away. It was almost two AM. If he left soon, he could make it to Albuquerque by seven. 

“Héctor said to bring a few of Tuco’s men. Who’s on the roster?”

“Well,” Marco started slowly. “There’s Varga.”

Lalo blinked in confusion, looking between his two cousins. “Who?”

“You know, his . . .” Marco glanced around the bar. “His friend.”

“Oh, you mean the one he—” Lalo raised his fist in front of his mouth and moved it back and forth. An old man across the room shot him a dirty look. Lalo met his gaze and the man quickly looked away. He turned back to his cousins. This time, Leonel was definitely smirking. 

“There’s also a man named Reyes, but they call him No-Doze. Then there’s Gonzalez, ‘Gonzo’ for short. He’s the one who married Ana.”

Lalo frowned. Ana, Tuco’s sister, was probably the sweetest of the Salamanca brood. He didn’t like the idea of her with one of Tuco’s all-American gang bangers, so he had made up an excuse to miss the wedding. He felt a brief pang of guilt as he realized he hadn't even bothered to learn Ana's new husband's name, but Lalo had no trouble brushing guilt aside. 

“Hold on, let me write this down.” 

Lalo pulled a small notebook and a pencil from his back pocket. He flipped to a free page and wrote “VARGA,” “NO DOSE,” and “GONZO.” After Gonzo, he scribbled an “A” in parenthesis. 

“Can they all handle themselves?”

“Gonzo definitely can. He’s built like a tank.”

Lalo drew a small tank after the A. 

“No-Doze might be a liability. He’s very concerned with status, and his ass-kissing is a nuisance.”

“He’s a short, thin guy with an even thinner mustache,” Leonel interjected. 

After No-Doze’s name, Lalo drew a nose with a pencil mustache underneath. After that, he drew an “X.”

“What about Varga? I’m not sure I want to mess with any of Tuco’s toys.”

“No, bring Varga. He’s smart. If you can only bring one of them, bring Varga.”

Lalo shrugged. “Alright. How do I recognize him?”

Marco glanced at Leonel, but his brother gave him nothing. He cocked his head to this side and drained half his rum as he thought. 

“He’s got these eyes. . .”

“Oh, good, he has eyes!”

“They’re very intense. Sometimes, they’re the color of the desert in late July. And when he looks at a man, it’s with all the heat of the Chihuahuan sun bleaching the bones of an animal who has crawled to the desert to die.” Marco placed his now empty glass on the table with a thud, punctuating his sentence. 

Marco’s florid praise was like listening to a bloodhound sing an aria. Lalo looked to Leonel to see if he was missing some kind of joke, but Leonel was stone-faced.

“You’re drunk, brother,” Lalo snickered around the straw of his mojito. 

Marco glared. 

Next to Varga’s name, Lalo drew two small eyes. He dotted the pupils and lightly shaded in the iris. They stared back up at him from the page. His head was beginning to swim. 

“Well, boys, I guess I should get going.” Lalo stood, swaying ever so slightly. “And hey! Thanks for everything!”

The twins followed him to the parking lot, where he stopped at his Monte Carlo and popped the trunk. 

“You really think you should drive like this? They’ll stop you at the border. They’ll impound your car.”

“Quiet down, Marco.” Lalo removed the false bottom from his trunk. At the back, between a pump-action shotgun and about $18,000 in coke salvaged from the evening’s earlier engagement, was a stack of passports. At any given time, Lalo had a number of false identities in rotation. Invariably, they honored personal heroes of his. For the sake of discredition, he would often adopt their _apellido materno—_ their mothers’ surnames— just as he had shed his father’s “Moreno” and donned his mother’s “Salamanca.” There was “Mateo Restrepo,” and homage to Griselda Blanco Restrepo, the Colombian Queen of Cocaine-Trafficking. There was “Alberto Gaviria,” in honor of Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, who had helped the Juárez Cartel blossom by folding them into his distribution network in the early eighties. There was “Jorge de Guzmán,” a tribute to Joaquín Guzmán, a laughably short man who Lalo thought could have gone far if only he hadn’t met the business end of Don Eladio’s gold-plated Smith & Wesson. Lalo picked up the Guzmán passport and studied his smiling face next to the fake name. No, he didn’t need _El Chapo_ ’s bad luck tonight. He tossed the passport back in the trunk and picked out the Gaviria one instead. He put it in his back pocket. 

“I’ll walk. Can you take my baby home? Tuck her in?” He tossed his car keys to Leonel, which he deftly caught. 

They parted without another word, Leonel to the Monte Carlo, Marco to their horribly contemporary Audi, and Lalo up the dark and quiet street. 

The bar wasn’t far from the Paso Del Norte Bridge. When Lalo was at school in El Paso, he learned the easiest way over the border was to walk. It certainly wasn’t an effective means for smuggling, but if he just needed to get across, he always breezed through on foot. He could call a friend in El Paso, get a car, and be in Albuquerque in the blink of an eye. 

But tonight was different. As he waited in one of the bridge’s seven pedestrian lanes, he felt eyes on the back of his head. He turned. Behind him was a young woman cooing softly to her baby. Lalo faced forward again. Slowly, the line ambled along. 

He was at the front of his line when the back of his neck began to itch. It was a cool night in Juárez, but a tight, dry heat was working it’s way over his skin. He glanced over his shoulder. In the lane to his right, a man maybe ten years his junior briefly met his gaze and then looked away. 

There was a time, when Lalo was a much younger man, that he had trouble keeping his anger in check. Tonight, with heat prickling his skin and with his head swimming with booze, his blood began to boil like it hadn’t in years. 

“Can I help you?”

The young man glanced back at him, quickly shook his head, and looked back towards the front of the line. 

“Oi! The fuck were you looking at, kid?”

The young man balked. “Nothing!”

“I just saw you looking at me. Are you telling me I didn’t see what I know I saw?”

“You were looking at me, mister!”

Lalo stepped up to the guardrail separating the two lanes. “You know what, asshole? I—“

“Next!”

Lalo froze. He looked over his shoulder. A white, middle-aged customs agent was staring back at him with a perturbed look upon her face. Lalo sheepishly stepped back from the guardrail and approached her. He handed her his passport, which she scrutinized closely. 

“Señor Gaviria. Business or pleasure?” she grumbled in English. 

“Pleasure.”

“Did the pleasure start early?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you intoxicated, sir?”

“Of course not.”

“I can smell it on you.”

Lalo took a deep breath to try and calm himself. He adopted an easy, contrite smile and flattened his voice, ebbing his accent as best he could. “Miss, my son lives in El Paso and this is the only weekend his mother said I could see him.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t want him to see you like this.”

His annoyance began to swell again. “I don’t think you understand—.”

“I don’t think you understand, sir. I can have you arrested for public intoxication.”

Lalo laughed. “Oh yeah, gringa? _You_ can have me arrested? You won’t even let me into your country!”

Suddenly, a man appeared beside him sporting a machine gun and a bullet proof vest that read _Policía Municipal_. 

Lalo didn’t make it to Albuquerque. With a fake passport in his pocket, he couldn’t risk throwing his name around, so he spent the rest of the night in a Juárez drunk tank. He stretched flat on his back across a cold metal bench and tried to ignore the side-eye glances he felt crawling over his skin. He closed his eyes and imagined himself in the desert, the Chihuahuan sun melting away his flesh until he was nothing but a pile of sun-bleached bones. 

* * * * *

  
  


“Tuco’s using again. He shot his friend.”

“His friend? That second-in-command he’s been screwing?”

“No, a man named Dog. But Varga was standing right behind him. He could have been hit.”

“A man named Dog, huh? You think there’s a dog out there named Man?”

“Lalo, Varga could have been killed.”

Lalo squinted incredulously at Marco. “So?”

“Tuco’s getting erratic, putting his best assets in danger.”

Lalo peered over the heads of the guests enjoying their dinner on his uncle’s patio and towards the backyard, where a makeshift dance floor had been constructed. Tuco was being chased around by a squealing gang of children, rosy-cheeked heirs to the cartel. He was hopping from foot to foot in a bizarre dance that made him look like a toad. 

“I don’t know,” Lalo said with a shrug. “He looks fine to me.”

Marco’s expression looked pained. “That’s—”

“Come on, Marco!” Lalo chided. His cousin’s hand-wringing was spoiling what was otherwise a very pleasant evening. It was times like this when he preferred the silent act. “Just enjoy the wedding— it’s Leonel’s big day! You owe that to your brother, no?”

Marco nodded gravely, eyes trained on his fists folded tightly on top of the bar. He was the most miserable best man Lalo had ever seen. Thank God no one expected him to give a speech. Lalo slapped his back amiably and set off towards the yard, loosening his tie as he walked. 

Tuco grinned when he spotted Lalo approaching. Sometimes, Lalo thought, that grin made him look like a maniac. The children swarmed Lalo’s legs and he batted gently at their heads.

“Leave me be, you little monsters! I need to talk to my cousin.”

One of them— a little girl Lalo vaguely recognized as Eladio’s granddaughter— punched his thigh. “No!”

Lalo crouched down and pinched the little girl’s cheek. “If you don’t leave us alone, I’m going to gobble you up. What do you think of that?” Lalo flashed her a toothy smile. 

The girl put her fists on her hips and stomped her feet. “I’m not afraid of you!”

“What about my friend the Big Bad Wolf? I could tell him to blow your house down.”

The girl shook her head, smiling with manic glee. “I’ll leave if you pay me!”

Lalo's grin grew wider. He fished his wallet from his suit pocket and pulled out twenty pesos, which he handed to the little girl. She squealed with delight and ran back towards the house. The other children raced after her, none of them stopping to ask for their own bribes. Lalo stood. 

Tuco was doubled over, his laughter rocaus and grating. “Shit, man, you just got _got_ by a six year old!” He spoke in English. Unsurprising— he spent too much time north of the border. 

Lalo raised his hands defeatedly. “Hey, I’m just trying to encourage a young lady’s enterprising spirit. Who knows, she might be your boss one day.”

“My boss? What about yours?”

Lalo chuckled. “Listen, _hermano_ , you bring a date?”

“Nah, I’m stag. Why, you got me a little _mamacita_?”

Lalo’s grin didn’t dwindle, but it did stiffen. He chose not to point out the redundancy of a “little mamacita.” 

“You didn’t bring Varga?”

Tuco’s face fell. Suddenly, there was a towering mountain of a man at his side. The mountain placed an enormous hand on Lalo’s shoulder.

“Tuco, this guy bothering you?” An American, talking like he was pulled from one of those god-awful American action movies. 

“Yo, back off, dude! This is my cousin, Loco Lalo!” 

No one else called him that, only Tuco. It irritated him a little, but Lalo held his tongue. 

The mountain yanked his hand back like he had touched a hot stove and Lalo cocked an eyebrow at his cousin. 

“You brought a bodyguard to a family wedding?”

“He ain’t just my bodyguard, he’s Ana’s husband.”

Recognition dawned on Lalo. “Oh, yeah, Gonzalez. Sorry I missed your wedding. _Mucho gusto_.”

“And you, _señor_.” The mountain mumbled awkwardly. 

“We were just talking about Varga. You know him?”

“Yeah, Ignacio.”

“Ignacio. Huh.” Lalo scratched his chin. “And what do we think of Ignacio?”

The mountain’s eyes darted warily between the two Salamancas. “He’s smart.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He’s a real, uh, professional. Maybe the most professional guy I’ve ever met.”

Lalo’s eyebrows rocketed skyward. He huffed a sharp laugh and looked to Tuco. “Is that so? 

“Yeah, he is, man. Nacho’s a solid guy,” Tuco said hurriedly. His face was slowly turning an unsettling shade of red. “He’s — what’s the word?” He looked to the mountain.

“Dependable?” the mountain supplied.

Tuco snapped his fingers. “Dependable! Yes! That motherfucker is dependable!”

“Is Nacho getting a promotion or something?” the mountain asked.

What a bold question. If Tuco let all his men be so brazen, that might be a problem.

“Why don’t you go grab yourself a drink?” Lalo said with a smile, a thinly veiled command. 

A cocktail of fear and shame flashed across Gonzo’s face. He slunk back to his table, where Ana was waiting for. 

Lalo turned back to Tuco. “You need to get rid of him.”

“Gonzo? I don’t know, man, what about Ana?”

“No,” Lalo said impatiently. “Varga.”

Tuco crossed his arms defensively over his chest. “Why? He’s my guy!” 

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Lalo stepped forward and Tuco stepped back. Walking backwards, he stumbled a little over the edge of the dance floor. Lalo herded him toward an empty corner of the lawn. 

“How long have you had Varga?”

“Since ‘87.”

Lalo’s resolve faltered momentarily. If that were true, it meant that Lalo had gone nearly a decade without ever hearing Varga’s name— perhaps these two actually could fly under the radar. Lalo quickly dismissed the thought. In situations like this, the other shoe was always bound to drop. 

“Eleven years is a long time, _hermano_. Are you in love with him?”

“No.” Rage crept over Tuco’s features, but he spoke in a hushed tone, his anger barely reined in his throat. “Look, I haven’t even touched him in two years. Not since Benny walked in on us.”

“That’s the dealer you shot in front of the rest of your crew?”

“Yeah, but it won’t happen again.”

“It will, if you keep this man around.”

“What are you saying? You want me to kill him?”

Lalo sighed. He was growing weary of having to spell things out. “Yes, Tuco, that’s the business.”

Tuco’s face sagged like a deflated balloon. It might have been funny if this weren’t the same little boy who used to come to him crying whenever he fell off his horse. 

“Look, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” Lalo soothed. “Sometimes it’s actually _more_ gratifying when it’s someone you care about.” 

“He’s not just a good lay, though.” The edges of Tucos’ voice softened. “He really is the best man I’ve got. When he’s in the room, everything makes sense, like I know when I need to bark and when I need to bite. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, man. He’s like a strong cup of coffee. He just helps me think clearly, ya know?

The look on his cousin’s face frightened Lalo. It was vulnerable in a way a good criminal should never be. 

“End it,” he said firmly

“Or what? You’ll tell _tío_?”

Lalo sighed. “This isn’t a threat, it’s advice. Take it or leave it. But if this,” he waved his hand vaguely in the air, “ever leads to trouble— and it will— you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

“I told you, I’m not fucking him anymore.”

“Take it or leave it,” Lalo repeated. He patted Tuco’s arm and turned on his heel. As soon he did, the mountain was back at Tuco’s side, checking his boss over. 

Lalo spotted Marco, still at the bar. He groaned and headed for his sulking cousin, weaving between the tables set up on the patio. He almost made it, but a slender hand grabbed his arm and yanked him into an empty seat. 

“Lalito! Talk to me!”

He glared at the small, old woman with comically feigned anger. “That really hurt!”

“What was all that about?” She jerked her silver head in the direction of the yard.

“I was just giving Tuco some advice.”

“What kind of advice?”

“Ay, Mamá, why are you such a gossip?”

Paloma threw her slender hands up in frustration. “Because no one tells me anything anymore! You can’t blame an old woman for wanting to feel included.” 

Lalo grinned at his mother. “Tuco has a secret. I explained to him that his life would be much easier if he didn’t have this secret. Simple.”

Paloma brought her hand to her son’s face and cupped his cheek. “No, it’s not that simple. What kind of world would we live in without a little something special to keep to ourselves? We all have secrets we need to keep, you know that.”

Lalo turned his head and kissed the palm of her hand. He looked back at Tuco, who was still talking to his lumbering bodyguard as more children tried to pull him by the leg of his pants back to the dancefloor.

“Yes, Mamá, I suppose I do.”   
  


* * * * *

Christian Bernal had been a thorn in Lalo’s side for years. He was a self-important, bobble-headed man who wore thick-framed glasses which Lalo suspected he didn’t need. Lalo allowed the occasional insubordination and disgruntled attitude slide because the smarmy picaro was a vital part of their supply chain. Bernal tackled the mundane, day-to-day challenges associated with moving hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana a year from South America to Mexico. Once the drugs reached Oaxaca, Lalo, his uncle, and their men oversaw the rest of the journey across the American border. As the years went on, Bernal began to feel less vital. The Juárez Cartel was asserting its independence from its South American suppliers, relying more and more on methamphetamine. With the turn of the century, the market was changing. Cocaine and the crack Americans derived from it had passed its heyday. Prescription painkillers were quickly eclipsing heroin in the steady demand for opioids. Even marijuana was grown farther and farther north. With locally-produced meth as the new staple crop, it was evident that Bernal’s supplier-relations expertise was a relic of an old economy. Bernal was a smart man. He knew the tide was changing, so he snatched a life raft— a $15 million life raft— and ran. 

Lalo phoned the twins, but when Ciro called him to the living room that evening, it was only Marco by his side. 

“Where’s Leonel?”

“Durango, still. Working on his marriage.”

Ciro’s eyebrows shot up. With a spike of irritation, Lalo shewed him away and beckoned his cousin to sit. He took a chair by the window, sitting in front of a wall lined with family photographs.

“His marriage? You’re joking.”

“He spoke to Héctor. He’s going to take on more responsibility supervising movement along the coast. Less travel.”

“Hmm.” Lalo had never seen Leonel as the managerial type, but maybe he had hidden talents. “Can you do this job alone?”

Marco’s brow pinched. Lalo wondered if he had touched a nerve. “I can, but it might be a better job for Tuco. It looks like Bernal’s headed to Albuquerque.”

Lalo laughed. “Bullshit. I’ve worked with that man over half my life. He’s not that stupid.”

“There’s rumors of a man in Albuquerque— a gringo who can sell you a new life. It’s witness protection for assholes too afraid to snitch.”

“And are the rumors true?”

Marco shrugged. “It won’t matter if we stop him before he gets there.”

Lalo smiled. A cloud had hung over Marco for the last year or so, but his signature coolness was slowly returning. “How far is Bernal from Albuquerque?”

“About a day out.”

“Good. Camp out at the border. Tuco can handle him if he makes it to Albuquerque, and you’ll be ready if he gets spooked and runs back south.”

Marco nodded solemnly and stood. “Thank you, brother.” 

Lalo placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Whatever you need. I mean it.” 

A week later, a small brown package with no return address arrived at Lalo’s home. He opened it on the patio next to the fire pit, away from the prying eyes of Ciro and Miguel. Inside he found a pair of thick-framed glasses, the lenses cracked and splattered with a dusty red residue. A polaroid sat tucked beneath the glasses. In the photo, Bernal was centered, a bloodied mess tied to a chair. His smashed glasses were slipping off his broken nose. Tuco stood to his right, staring at the camera with that ridiculous, thuggish stoicism he tried so hard to cultivate, but an infantile pride still glinted in his eyes. He had one hand raised in a thumbs-up, showing off his crimson-stained knuckles. Behind Bernal, just slightly out of focus, stood a third man. He had a hand twisted in Bernal’s hair, keeping his head from slumping over. He was staring straight down the barrel of the lens. The camera flash illuminated his eyes. They gleamed with something Lalo didn’t quite recognize, something dire. 

Lalo tossed both pieces of evidence into the fire. The flames ate the polaroid from the bottom right corner up. First to go was Tuco’s midsection, and then his head and Bernal’s sunken chest, then Bernal’s hair matted down with blood over the peetering glasses. Last to go were the stranger’s eyes. Lalo stared at those eyes in between the flames, and they stared back at him, until finally— with a great, percussive crackle— they ignited. 

  
  


* * * * *

  
  


Leonel was by Marco’s side again the next time Lalo saw them. They arrived while he was taking Belinda, his best mare, for a walk. He steered her to the edge of the corral, where the boys were leaning against the rusted gate. 

Lalo didn’t bother to dismount. He didn’t offer any sympathies for Leonel’s missing wife, and he didn’t raise a questioning brow at Marco. Instead, they dove straight into business. 

“Tuco’s in prison.”

“What’s he done this time?”

“Beat up an old gringo while he was strapped. The Americans are calling it assault with a deadly weapon.”

“Shit.”

“Héctor offered a gift to the gringo in exchange for saying the gun was his, but the old dog refused. Leonel and I are headed up there to help him see the light.” Marco’s tone was resolute, but he glanced warily at his brother as if he was worried Leonel might refute him. 

But Leonel just turned to Lalo and spoke simply. “Come with us. Tuco’s is good territory, and you could make it great.”

Lalo laughed, doubled over Belinda’s neck. “And what, live in Albuquerque? No thanks, I’ve spent enough time in America for one lifetime. 

Both the twins frowned. “Héctor won’t be happy to hear that.”

Lalo shrugged. “Tell him I’m busy.”

The twins stayed for dinner that evening. They helped Lalo and Yolanda in the kitchen and maintained their deferential silence when Yolanda instructed them on how to use the carving knife. Lalo, Marco, and Leonel ate in the spacious, ornate dining room, while Yolanda busied herself cleaning the kitchen. 

“So, Héctor’s already in Albuquerque?” 

Marco and Leonel nodded in unison. 

“Did he bring anyone with him?” Lalo asked around a mouthful of enchiladas. 

“Arturo Colon,” Marco replied. 

Lalo hummed. “Good. Arturo was born north of the border, no? Héctor leaves him in Albuquerque, he’ll know exactly what he’s doing.”

“Arturo’s decent, but he’s from Arizona. He’ll need some help from someone with local expertise.”

“And who’s that?”

Marco glanced at his brother. Leonel nodded. 

Lalo groaned. “Please don’t say Varga!”

“He’s—.”

“He’s smart?”

“He’s loyal.”

Lalo burst into laughter. “Well, of course he’s loyal! I know what we pay our men.”

Leonel leaned forward and spoke with an adamant tone. “He’s not loyal to money, he’s loyal to _Salamanca_.”

“He has been with us for fifteen years,” Marco added. 

“You really think our best course of action is leaving Tuco’s _boyfriend—_ ,” Lalo paused, hoping his cousins might take offense and throw their hands up in protest, (they didn’t even blink), “— in charge?”

Marco stared blankly and Leonel frowned gravely at him. “His involvement with Tuco is exactly what makes Varga such an asset,” Marco said flatly.

“He’s practically family,” Leonel added. 

Lalo mirrored his cousin's frown. He certainly didn’t need any more in-laws up north to keep track of— the mountain who married Ana was bad enough. And who was Varga to Tuco, really? When they met, was he a kid looking to make some quick cash, an easy conquest? Maybe Tuco just kept him around because he needed a constant in his turbulent life. And who was Tuco to Varga? A meal ticket, an escape from a troubled past, or just an unstable drug addict with an unreasonable amount of power? There were too many unanswered questions, but Lalo felt the problem was out of his hands. He wanted nothing to do with Albuquerque, and if he wanted to keep it that way, he would have to let these decisions fall to others. 

“Fine. The Albuquerque territory goes to Arturo Colon and Mr. Ignacio _Salamanca_ until Tuco gets out. When does Héctor get back?”

Marco's stony facade was broken with a small smile. “You know him, he’ll ‘supervise’ until he’s satisfied everything’s running smoothly. Could take ages.”

Lalo chuckled. “Why can’t he learn to be more hands off? He doesn’t need the stress. I’m telling you, one of these days it’s gonna kill him.”

* * * * *

It didn’t kill Héctor, but it did put him in a coma. Not even a year after Tuco’s arrest, Juan Bolsa came to Lalo’s home on a quiet March morning, toting the bad news and his expertly feigned contrition. 

“Marco and Leonel are already in Albuquerque. They left as soon as they heard.”

Lalo nodded slowly. They sat by the window in Lalo’s living room, Bolsa in front of the wall of family photographs. Lalo stared blankly over his left shoulder at an old photo from his parent’s wedding. Paloma wore a simple, high-necked white gown that matched her wide, toothy grin. She was dancing with her brother, her head thrown back. Héctor was grinning smugly as if he had just told a very funny joke. 

“Lalo?”

“Hmm?” His eyes snapped back to Bolsa. 

“When will you be joining them?”

“I won’t.”

Bolsa failed to hide his disappointment. “You’re not leaving?”

“What’s the point, Juan? He’s comatose. Marco and Leonel will sort whatever needs sorting in Albuquerque, and I’ll take care of Héctor’s business here.” 

“And then you’ll go to see him?”

“I’ll go when he wakes up.”

“That could be ages. If ever.”

Lalo managed a weak laugh. “He’s a Salamanca. We’re always quick to bounce back.”

* * * * *

It was almost a year before Héctor woke up. In that year, Lalo stayed in Mexico. He deflected questions daily about when he would finally go to see his poor uncle. Each time, he replied that he would go to visit when there was actually someone to visit— not just a lifeless body in a hospital bed. Lalo could tell people thought he was callous. Even Don Eladio, a man who had killed his own son out of fear of a coup, told him he was being cold. But Lalo didn’t care. It was better that they thought he was cold, rather than the truth. Everytime he thought of his uncle, lying there inert and helpless with tubes shoved into his body, he was overcome with guilt. It should have been him in Albuquerque, not Héctor. He knew his uncle had a weak heart, he knew the stress wasn’t good for him. But he had let Héctor take on all that extra work while he stayed home in Mexico, and now Héctor was paying the price for it. 

Marco and Leonel kept him apprised of the situation in Albuquerque. Shortly after Héctor’s heart attack, Arturo Colon was shot and killed by a local gang, small-time competitors called the Espinozas. The twins made sure the Espinozas suffered appropriate reprisals and then returned home, leaving Tuco’s friend in charge. Things were quiet after that. Albuquerque became a footnote in their operational meetings, (“business is good, Héctor is stable”), until, finally, it was a headline again. 

Marco called him on a mild day in February, just as the ornaments of spring were beginning to reemerge across Chihuahua. 

“Héctor’s awake.”

Lalo was gone by the next day. He drove for 9 hours straight. When he finally arrived in Albuquerque, he drove straight to Casa Tranquila, the nursing home where Héctor was put up. He sat in the parking lot, staring at the door for forty-five minutes, willing himself to go inside. But he didn’t. Instead, he decided it was best to attend to business first. He ended up in the South Valley at a modest little shack called El Michoacáno. According to the twins, this was where Varga conducted collections, every Monday at 2:00. It was a quarter ‘til when Lalo arrived. Varga hadn’t yet arrived, but one of his foot soldiers had. The young man was chatting amiably with the restaurant’s proprietor. Lalo introduced himself with a similar affability, but fear immediately struck both their faces when he said his name. Lalo wondered what stories they had heard about him. It made him uneasy, but he quickly reminded himself that fear was a good thing. It meant they had only heard the stories they were supposed to hear, not the ones he was careful to stamp out. He wondered what these men might have heard about Tuco and Varga, if the young one had been at the party when Tuco shot his own man all those years ago.

Lalo busied himself in the kitchen. If Varga was family like Marco and Leonel claimed he was, he would greet him as such. But Varga arrived before Lalo finished the meal. He did not enter like Tuco would have, bombastic and clownish. Rather, he stalked into the kitchen while Lalo had his back turned, like a jungle cat prowling silently through the night. He was shorter than Lalo had thought. In the single photograph he’d seen, Varga had stood at the same height as Tuco, who was short himself, but had seemed to tower over Bernal. It was shocking to finally come face to face with him and have to look down. Varga’s height didn’t undermine his menace, however. He made up for it with his eyes, which never once left Lalo as he moved about the kitchen. Lalo remembered how he had laughed at Marco in that dimly lit bar in Juárez. Maybe Marco had been onto something. 

Varga didn’t need to be told he was speaking with a Salamanca. He guessed the name and hid a grimace behind a scratch of his nose, which Lalo made sure to note. Obviously, he knew “Salamanca.” But did he know “Lalo Salamanca”? Lalo wondered. Maybe he knew “Loco Lalo,” the lunatic that Tuco admired so much. Or maybe he knew more— maybe he knew “Eduardo Alberto Moreno Salamanca,” son of Rafael Moreno and Paloma Salamanca. Varga’s eyes bore into him and Lalo hid his own grimace behind the smile he learned from his mother. 

* * * * *

Ignacio’s eyes bore into him and Lalo thrust deeper into his throat. He didn’t gag or even flinch, and Lalo wondered how many times Ignacio had knelt in front of Tuco, just like this, staring up at him as he bobbed up and down on his cock. Tuco probably would have looked away, Lalo figured. But he couldn’t. His eyes were locked on Ignacio’s, which looked back at him with a bizarre extremity that straddled both apprehension and arrogance. An uncomfortable heat was growing inside Lalo, rising from his stomach to his head. He imagined himself deep in the Lacandon Jungle, hacking away at palms and ferns with a machete before spotting a pair of yellow eyes flashing in the dark. Lalo laid his hand on Ignacio’s scalp to still him. 

  
“ _Espere_.”

Ignacio pulled off, eyes trained on Lalo’s face. Did the man ever blink? He cocked his head to the side and rubbed a hand up Lalo’s thigh. “ _Estas bien?”_

“ _Si, soy bueno . . ._ ” Suddenly, Lalo felt incredibly embarrassed. It was confusing, as he had never felt embarrassed in a situation like this before. He looked around the kitchen, trying to peek into the restaurant’s dining room. El Michoacáno had closed hours ago, and as usual the streets of modest mixed-use neighborhood were dead. But if Lalo craned his neck, he could see out to the parking lot, which only made the fevered heat inside him rise. “I don’t know, man, don’t you feel exposed?”

Beneath him, he heard a chuckle. He looked down and Ignacio was smiling. With a start, Lalo realized in the four weeks he’d known Ignacio, he had not once seen him smile. Lines pulled at the corners of his eyes, and the ends of his mouth pushed into deep dimples. “Lalo, are you scared?”

Lalo frowned. “What?”

The smile quickly faded from Ignacio’s face. He looked away, studying the stains on the kitchen floor. “Nothing. I was just . . . Nothing. Nevermind.”

Lalo realized his question may have come out harsher than he meant it. But Ignacio had spent fifteen years by Tuco’s side. He should expect much worse from a Salamanca. 

Lalo chewed the inside of his cheek, trying to decide whether or not to push the issue further. Finally, he returned his hand back to Ignacio’s head and guided him forward. As Ignacio went back to to work, Lalo stared at the blank wall in front of him.

  
  


* * * * *

The situation with Nacho was getting out of hand. Lalo could tell Nacho was coming to know him as more than Tuco’s cousin, more than Héctor’s nephew. It was his own fault, really. His loquaciousness had never been a problem before. He was quite adept at filling the air with carefully curated but meaningless noise. With Nacho, though, that was changing. Lalo didn’t even realize it was happening until Nacho told him his mother was dead.

Nacho was on his back, his hands folded over his bare stomach, staring at his bedroom ceiling. “I was fifteen,” he said. 

Lalo didn’t know how to respond. This wasn’t the pillow talk he was used to. He considered he should console Nacho, but Nacho’s tone was flat, matter-of-fact, like he was reading a weather report. Lalo leaned back against the headboard and tried to find something to say.

“My mother’s dead, too. It happened a few years ago. A congenital heart disease finally got the best of her.”

Nacho turned his head towards Lalo, eyebrows knitted together. “Was it the same thing that . . . ?” He trailed off, letting the words unsaid sit heavy in the air.

“Yep, same as Héctor.” Lalo tapped his knuckles against his own chest, over his heart. “It runs in the family.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize that.” Nacho rolled onto his side and rested his head on Lalo’s shoulder, placing his hand on top of the hand sitting over Lalo’s heart. It was beating steadily now, strong and sure thanks to the little white and green pills Lalo took religiously. . He had never told anyone outside the family about his heart. He wondered if Nacho could feel it beating. Nacho was staring at him now, his deep amber eyes wide and inquisitive. Sometimes it felt like those eyes could look inside his skull, but tonight that didn’t scare him. In fact, he felt shockingly content. He found himself silently thanking Tuco for keeping Nacho around all those years.

With a smile on his face, he rubbed his free hand back and forth over Nacho’s scalp. “You’ve been with my family a long time, haven’t you, Ignacio?”

Nacho hummed in response.

“You ever hear about me? Before I came up here?”

Nacho’s gaze wavered. He looked down at their hands resting together on Lalo’s chest. “Bits and pieces.”

“Like what?”

Nacho looked back up at Lalo. He was chewing on his bottom lip— he seemed to be wrestling with something in his head.

With his free hand, Lalo tugged at Nacho’s earlobe. “Come on, man! I want to know if my reputation precedes me.”

Nacho’s eyes were steely now. “I heard you killed your father.”

Lalo felt the smile slowly fall from his face.

“I thought family meant everything to you Salamancas.” The words were mumbled into the skin of Lalo’s shoulder, barely intelligible. 

And that was that. Once again Lalo retreated behind his secrets. He lied for his mother’s sake, decomposing in the family estate back in Chihuahua. He told Nacho that yes, he had killed his father. He exaggerated his father’s villainy— at the very least he could paint himself as a hero saving his poor, helpless mother, (a description Paloma would have slapped him upside the head for). Nacho’s eyes bore into him and Lalo wondered if he could still see him through the lies. 

Nacho had been with the Salamanca family for seventeen long and violent years by the time he met Lalo. Already, he knew a version of “Eduardo Salmanca.” He had come to know him not only through the stories he'd heard, but through Tuco’s petulance, through Marco and Leonel’s brutality, through Héctor’s cruelty. Every Salamanca shaped the name in some way, a name Lalo had chosen over his own father’s. He wore his mother’s name proudly, but tonight he began to wonder who Nacho might see if he had met Eduardo Moreno. Lalo pictured the body of the late Rafael Moreno slumped on the floor of a burning shed. How easily his body had burned, and his name right along with it.

Lalo hand drifted from Nacho's head down his neck, drawing circles over the skin with his fingertips. “I loved my _mamá_. I would do anything for her, and she would do anything for me. She used to tell me ‘Eduardo, you have a fire inside you. If anyone tries to put it out, burn them to the ground.'”

Lalo met Nacho's gaze and they studied one another in silence until, finally, Lalo had to look away.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Here's a timeline, in case that helps:
> 
> Introduction --> 1996  
> Bar in Juarez --> 1997  
> Leonel's Wedding --> 1999  
> The Ballad of Christian Bernal --> 2001  
> Tuco Goes to Prison --> 2002  
> Hector Heart Attacks Him --> 2003
> 
> And then the rest takes place in 2004.
> 
> This fic was inspired entirely by the fact that in season 1 of Narcos, Pablo Escobar and his cousin Gusravo Gaviria are constantly calling each other "brother."
> 
> Lastly, I made Lalo's second name Alberto because Tuco's real name is Alberto. (Tuco isn't short for Alberto, it's just something you call someone who's intimidating. It can also mean "the ugly one"). I come from a large Catholic family that recycles names constantly, and I wouldn't be surprised if that happened in the Salamanca family, too.


End file.
